Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
It sounded interesting, but I couldn't finish the second or third cd of the book. Way too much irrelevant and uninteresting detail, e.g. "Tom was the kind of guy that liked his beer cold and smoked Lucky's by the dozen..." ad nauseum. Who cares? If it's a book about how America slipped into questionable or illegal or immoral practices, tell me why, how and when it happened, etc. Of course individuals are important, but I don't care how many bathroom breaks they take each day. Also, I think that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were terrible at their jobs, and perhaps terrible people. But it's history; let's move on. Again, I get that they were relevant here, but let's limit the rehash to what's necessary to support the book's points. An extremely dense book, Dirty Wars uses the story of the targeted killing of an American Muslim as a thread to tie together hard scrabble investigative reporting of America's post 9/11 war policy and actions. Fear, radicalization, deceit and a whole lot of political maneuvering make the story distasteful enough, regardless of Scahill's personal politics. He does a particularly excellent job tying together the simultaneous actions in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan, showing how each theater affected the others. It is a magnificent, horrible tapestry. However, I fear that its extreme attention to detail will relegate it to the bookshelves of academics and wonks. I plan on watching the film next, which hopefully has delivered the lessons of this investigation to a wider audience.
What do You think about Dirty Wars: The World Is A Battlefield (2013)?
This book is truly terrifying and disturbing and also deeply truthful and important to read.
—sl_beckum
Good book but very long. Could have shortened it and it would have been just as effective.
—Karen
It's terrifying what we have become complicit in.
—now
Deeply reported book and incredibly interesting
—madyxathey
